The duke of wellington biography of abraham

DuVERNET, HENRY ABRAHAM (in 1842 he changed his name to Henry Abraham DuVernet Grosset Muirhead), army officer, military engineer, and jp; b. 4 April 1787, eldest of ten children of Abraham DuVernet and Miriam Grosset Muirhead; m. Martha Maria Iqualin Van Kemper, and they had three children; d. 16 Dec. 1843 at Bredisholm, his residence near Coatbridge, Scotland.

Henry Abraham DuVernet’s family traced its origins in France back to 1150. After the Reformation one branch remained in France and the other, Huguenot, went first to the Low Countries and then to England. DuVernet’s father, a colonel in the Royal Artillery, was an aide-de-camp to Prince William Henry. Following Abraham DuVernet’s accidental death in 1806, the prince befriended his widow and obtained commissions for some of his sons.

DuVernet himself had been appointed ensign in the Royal Staff Corps on 22 Dec. 1803 and was promoted lieutenant on 12 Sept. 1805. His first active service was with Major-General Brent Spencer’s expedition to the Mediterranean in 1808. He subsequently took part in the retreat to La Coruña, Spain, with Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore and was invalided home in 1809. DuVernet was made captain on 30 May of that year, major on 2 June 1825, and lieutenant-colonel on 31 Dec. 1828. Placed on half pay on 1 July 1834, he was then the longest serving officer in the Royal Staff Corps (over 30 years); he became colonel in 1840.

In 1818 the Duke of Richmond [Lennox*], governor-in-chief of British North America, submitted a masterly report on the defences of the colonies. He stressed the urgent need for an alternative route between Montreal and Kingston to obviate the possibility of supply convoys of canoes and bateaux being ambushed in the upper St Lawrence River should hostilities with the United States break out again. DuVernet was sent to the Canadas with two companies of

Abraham Solomon was born into a third-generation immigrant Jewish family in Sandy’s Street, Bishopsgate Without, in the East of London, England on 14 May 1823; his father was a merchant Michael (Myer) and his younger siblings Rebecca (1832–1886) and Simeon (1840–1905) also became well-known artists. After attending preparatory art schools, Sass’s and Carey’s, in Bloomsbury from the age of 13, Abraham was recommended for admission to the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 15, where he gained silver medals for drawing from the Antique (1839) and from life (1843). He began exhibiting at the age of 16 with his ‘Rabbi Expounding the Scriptures’, displayed in March 1840 at the Society of British Artists, also exhibiting three works at the Liverpool Academy the same year. In addition to exhibiting with both societies, in May 1841 he showed two paintings at the Royal Academy including a scene from a Sir Walter Scott novel. In 1843 he was commissioned to copy Antoine Claudet’s daguerreotype of the Duke of Wellington, afterwards made into a steel engraving by Henry Thomas Ryall.

In 1846 Abraham established his own studio in Percy Street, London (followed by others at Howland Street, Upper Charlotte Street and, finally, 18 Gower Street, which he shared with sister Rebecca). He regularly exhibited genre paintings of literary and popular subjects at the RA including, in 1842, a scene from Oliver Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield', and from the late 1940s many of his paintings were reproduced as engravings for the Illustrated London News. After travelling to Biarritz in the south of France in autumn 1862 to recuperate from a heart condition, he died there suddenly on 19 December 1862, at the age of 39. His work has been shown posthumously at Ben Uri Gallery including in the opening exhibition of the Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery and an Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists at Woburn House, London in 1

Inventor of the wristwatch (1747–1823)

Abraham-Louis Breguet (French pronunciation:[abʁa.amlwibʁeɡɛ]; 10 January 1747 – 17 September 1823), born in Neuchâtel, then a Prussian principality, was a Swiss-French horologist who made many innovations in the course of a career in watchmaking industry, including the tourbillon. He was the founder of the Breguet company, which is now a luxury watch division of the Swiss Swatch Group.

In his lifetime he was considered the leading watchmaker of his day, and he built up a clientele that included many leading public figures and members of the European nobility.

Alongside his friend and contemporary John Arnold, Breguet is now widely acknowledged as one of the greatest horologists of all time. One of his famous ancestors was Jean Breguet (who died in 1593) a Protestant pastor in Neuchâtel very much influenced by the ideas of John Calvin.

Life

Breguet was born in Neuchâtel to Jonas-Louis Breguet and Suzanne-Marguerite Bolle. Breguet's father died in 1758 when he was ten, and his formal schooling ended when he was 12. Breguet's mother remarried Joseph Tattet, who came from a family of watchmakers. Tattet had a showroom in Paris; the family tried for some time to entice the young Breguet into the trade, to no avail, but he eventually took to it with great interest and in 1762, aged 15, he was sent to be apprenticed to an unknown Versailles master-watchmaker. At this time the Court had a great influence on the trade and the best watchmakers established themselves around Versailles.

The young Breguet soon "astonished" his master with his aptitude and intelligence, and to further his education he took evening classes in mathematics at the Collège Mazarin under Abbé Marie, who became a friend and mentor to the young watchmaker. Through his role as tutor to the dukes of Angoulême and de Berri, Abbé Marie was able to arrange for Breguet to be introduced to King Louis XVI of